Okay so I've failed this quest at least 10 times now, even a few times on Easy Mode. I am at a complete loss, and am not sure it is possible with the deck I am using in my campaign and the restrictions on myself for the campaign. So, if anyone wants to just say "no you can't beat this quest under those restrictions," let me know and I will restart The Road Darkens box with a new deck entirely.

Here are my restrictions:

1) Following all Campaign rules as normal, obviously.

2) Deck is thematic as possible. So for example, any cards with traits or titles that would not have been present, or applicable during this point in the story are ineligible (i.e. Steward of Gondor, Rohan allies, etc.). The only exception in my deck are the Winged Guardians, because I couldn't adequately defend attacks without them.

3) My collection includes 2 Core, up through Encounter at Amon Din, and the first 2 Saga boxes obviously.

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9503/aragorn-hobbits-thematic-the-road-darkens-1.0

Any help is desperately needed and appreciated, but I am willing to go back to The Ring Goes South and re-do my Hero selections and completely re-tool my deck, but that would be completely admitting defeat.

I've only beaten this with power questing through before the Balrog shows up, and I don't know whether you can get that going with your thematic restrictions. Have you considered using Seastan's Favor of the Valar variant as a substitute for Easy mode? With it eventually your thematic deck will prevail; it's just a matter of how much help you need from the Valar to do it.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/271926-easy-mode-variant-cycle-campaign-variant/

28 minutes ago, dalestephenson said:

I've only beaten this with power questing through before the Balrog shows up, and I don't know whether you can get that going with your thematic restrictions. Have you considered using Seastan's Favor of the Valar variant as a substitute for Easy mode? With it eventually your thematic deck will prevail; it's just a matter of how much help you need from the Valar to do it.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/271926-easy-mode-variant-cycle-campaign-variant/

Interesting. I haven't seen that post. I may have to try that lol

I'll second that power questing is the way to go, especially in campaign mode. It takes a very specialized quest to defeat the Balrog. All it takes is a good questing deck to try and race through to escape before the Balrog arrives. It took me a few tries, but I was able to manage with a more limited card pool and a thematic deck. Good luck!

I played 2-handed so my experience will be different than yours (if anything, it meant more direct damage and the Balrog came out sooner, hah). I managed to beat it thematically with hero choice, but not with other cards in the deck. Hobbits have low HP so you really need to get allies on the table. I ended up having 1 mono-tactics deck which was like 35 ally cards so I could plop more HP on the table every single round, and then have plenty of chump blockers. The heroes were Gimli, Legolas, Merry in that deck, with Aragorn, Pippin, and Sam in the other. I remember actually toying around with Spirit Pippin in that quest, so I could have a Spirit hero and A Test of Will right from turn 1. Lore Pippin ended up in the winning game though. Looking at my quest log, looks like it took 8 tries.

I edited the deck in adding more, cheaper allies, but most depend on getting Sword that Was Broken into play, ASAP, so they all have 1 or 2 WP, instead of 0 or 1. Also added Radaghast's Cunning and Secret Paths, so I can nuke an enemy or location when needed for the extra questing power. I'll give this version a try and see if I can quest hard enough to get by before the Balrog shows, or at least, shows late enough to survive it.

http://ringsdb.com/decklist/view/9507/aragorn-hobbits-thematic-the-road-darkens-2.0

If you want to go super thematic, you have to sacrifice Gandalf to the Balrog so you need Gandalf hero!

1 hour ago, GrandSpleen said:

If you want to go super thematic, you have to sacrifice Gandalf to the Balrog so you need Gandalf hero!

when I got The Road Darkens and saw I could swap my heroes without the threat penalty, I almost went with Gandalf hero

I was able to beat it with a reduced card pool using Hobbits for my blog:

https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/path-less-traveled-journey-in-the-dark/

The trick really was power-questing through as fast as possible and hoping to win before the Balrog ever showed up.

11 hours ago, Authraw said:

I was able to beat it with a reduced card pool using Hobbits for my blog:

https://darklingdoor.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/path-less-traveled-journey-in-the-dark/

The trick really was power-questing through as fast as possible and hoping to win before the Balrog ever showed up.

Nice! Basically, I'm wondering if I will have to resort to including Spirit in order to quest enough to run through it.

Including Fellowship of the Ring will be helpful, though.

Re-tooled and tried 5 times after work. 5 failures. ?

Guess I have to switch up my hero/sphere selection and go back to The Ring Goes South.